I have a chatbox, so when user hits post, it calls a php script to update database, and another php script located within itself to refresh the conversation to display the newly added message.
I thought about how to do this and here is how i have come about:
Have ajax call on button click to POST the data needed to the first php form to update the database (No need to return anything except whether succeed or fail)
Have e same ajax call php script located within itself to refresh the conversation (Note that this php script is located within itself as it is a loop and i use it to echo out the reply divs) in this case, page will not refresh and data can still be sent and obtained.
However, I'm not very sure how to do the second point, being call a php loop within itself to refresh the page and update the newest entry, any suggestions or would it be overly hard to do so such that i should just manually refresh the page.
To be more specific, this is the process flow of how adding a reply will work:
- User types reply, clicks post.
Ajax is already attached to post button, so detects the post and fires first POST request to addchat.php
addchat.php contains mysqli code to update the database with the data posted from the ajax, returns success or fail
Once Ajax receives back success request, immediately fire off a command(this is what i am not very sure), that runs the php code located within the same document to echo out the newly updated chat reply (i do have timestamps in my database, so there is the ability to compare time, but note that the function is located within the same script)
After the php code is fired again, it updates the html automatically, since its located within the same script.
I am also not possible whether this is achievable with ajax, because many others use long polling instead to keep checking the database, but because my chat system does not need that high level functionality and the replies aren't that request, so what i am doing is just to get ajax to fire off the retrieval php script whenever somebody posts a reply to update the conversation. this should be more than enough.
